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Iroquoian Women: Power Held and Shared by Carol P. Christhttps://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/21/iroquoian-women-power-held-and-shared-by-carol-p-christ/
https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/21/iroquoian-women-power-held-and-shared-by-carol-p-christ/#commentsMon, 21 Jan 2019 08:01:17 +0000http://feminismandreligion.com/?p=43166Read More ›]]>According to Barbara Alice Mann, author of Iroquoian Women, women were at the center of a matrilineal Iroquoian society that could be called (though she does not call it that) an “egalitarian matriarchy.” As in other egalitarian matriarchies, including those of the Mosuo and the Minangkabau, women both hold power and share it with men. According to Peggy Reeves Sanday who studied many societies in the anthropological records, female power does not mean female domination.

In attempting to reconstruct the role of women in Iroquois society, Mann first had to engage in a painstaking deconstruction of the scholarly consensus that men ruled among the Iroquois. Believing that male dominance is universal, scholars ignored or explained away a great deal of evidence that Iroquoian women were and are at the center of Iroquoian society. Those who believe that academic scholarship is objective or relatively objective may have to revise their opinions after reading the masses of evidence of witting and unwitting distortion of Iroquois society that Mann uncovers. In order to reconstruct the role of women in Iroquoian society, Mann also had to deal with the fact that the American government destroyed much of Iroquoian oral tradition through policies of forced assimilation that removed children to government schools and forbade the speaking of native languages.

According to Mann, the Iroquois were not monotheists, and they did not believe in Gods or Goddesses. Mann argues that references to a “Great Spirit” as the highest power in the Iroquoian pantheon emerged in response to Christian missionizing and conquest. In contrast, she argues that the Iroquois recognize many spirits and the need to keep everything in balance. Iroquoian myths are not intended to provide information about another world. Rather they are teaching stories that embody the central values of Iroquoian culture.

The central Iroquoian story tells of Sky Woman and her daughter Fat-Faced Lynx. When Sky Woman fell to earth she carried seeds of the Three Sisters, Corn, Squash, and Beans in one hand and Tobacco in the other. She soon gave birth to Lynx and together they roamed the earth planting seeds and naming the animals. Eventually Lynx became pregnant by the wind and gave birth to two sons, Sapling and Flint. Lynx died in childbirth. Not long after Sky Woman died as well. Lynx became known as Mother Earth while Sky Woman became Grandmother Moon.

The story of Sky Woman and Lynx reflects the centrality of the mother-daughter bond in matrilineal cultures: there is no room or need for a sacred marriage and the idea that a single male God created the world out of nothing would have seemed preposterous. Sky Woman is connected to women’s agricultural work in Iroquoian culture: she brought the seeds of the three plants the women cultivated. However, because the rivalry between the motherless twins Sapling and Flint fit more easily into patriarchal narratives, the stories of love and co-operation between Sky Woman and Lynx and of Sky Woman’s gift of seeds were largely forgotten or ignored by western missionaries, colonists, and academics.

According to Mann, the stories of Sky Woman and Lynx and of Sapling and Flint in the earliest times of the earth story reflect a principle of pairing known as “double wampum,” the intention of which is to include all points of view, rather than (as is more common in western thinking) to exclude in order to dominate. As there are two sets of two, four points of view are expressed.

The principle of double wampum can be used to explain the pairing of the men’s councils made up of uncles and the women’s councils made up of grandmothers in the governance of the clan. Women gave birth to the next generations, owned the land, and controlled the cycles of planting, harvesting, and food preparation. Thus they presided over all of the internal or family and land-based activities of the clan. The men were involved with the external relations of the clan, including trading and greeting visitors, hunting and managing forests, and making war and peace. They were the ones to meet with missionaries, colonizers, and academics. European men did not understand that the Iroquoian men could make decisions affecting the clan as a whole only when the women agreed with their policies. They did not see or did not know how to interpret the powerful roles of women in Iroquoian society.

Barbara Alice Mann’s Iroquoian Women provides convincing proof that patriarchy is not the only way to organize society and that another way is possible—way that celebrates co-operation and sharing rather than exclusion and domination.

The poems below are excerpted from my new (I hope forthcoming) collection, Tell Me the Story Again. Ancient dreamer’s voice is one among many voices including sorrow singer, temple sweeper, sword woman, morose fool, merry drunk, grey cat and mouse, stone mountain, skeleton woman, mother rain and many more. The voices speak from a time perhaps just after (or long before) our time, in a real and magical world.

I chose to excerpt ancient dreamer’s poems because winter is the time, in Celtic lore, of the Cailleach, the old one, the divine hag. When I began writing the poems in 2014, my mother-in-law, then age 101, was in the last stages of her life. She slept and dreamed most of the time, and I would sit and daydream with her. She died two months before her 102nd birthday. When I took up the collection again in 2018 to complete it, ancient dreamer remained a strong presence and has the last word.

What does it mean to approach the idea of a Godma, a mother-of-all, as an act of the imagination, as a pure act of speculation? I particularly love the word speculator: one who is mining for the diamond, one who is going off the map, a voyager, a voyeur, a seer. A spiritual adventurer. A gambler, a trader in divine currencies.

I am a writer of fictions—speculative fictions. I am a poet-philosopher. Acts of the imagination and divine currencies are my trade.

I like this phrase: In the beginning was an of the imagination, a movement of mind. Or better—an act of procreation, a giving of birth. I love how words lead an idea deeper into the woods. A chance to get lost in variations and find new places to hide and seek. Perchance to meet an angel. Or a wolf. Or yourself in disguise.

Here is a speculation: what if religion is the way the mind leaps towards the ineffable. Leaps towards the intangibles, the unknowables. Then those free-form leaps become poems, prayers, gods, beliefs which calcify over time into dogmas and orthodoxies.

Leaping stops. Spiritual evolution pauses. Sometimes it is a long pause.

In world where men created most of the extant religions, what happens when a woman takes the leap? Or maybe the better question is: what are the preconditions for her leap? Must she first de-colonize her mind, shedding encumbrances, divesting herself of the rag tag ends of the dominant mythos? Or perhaps she sheds as she goes, becoming lighter and lighter until leap happens.

For me, at the beginning of my journey, the leaps happened close to home, and the decolonization was a scrappy affair. I was a child born with a speculative mind, prone to questions. Almost immediately, almost unwittingly, I began modifying the religion I was schooled in.

I was seven, being prepared for first holy communion in the Catholic Church, when I made my first radical divestment. Sitting in the classroom, coloring a pair of monkeys to place in the ark, I learned that the god on offer had drowned all the children, and saved only two of each of the animals. My mind slid away and out of his grasp. When I got home, I removed that god from my deck of holy cards.

Doubt is a spiritual gift. Doubt is a ferocious guardian. As a child, this guardian kept my mind and soul inviolate. No matter what dogmas the nuns fed me with my daily bread, the spiritual world that I inhabited remained a secret, sacred garden. If the dogma offended, my childmind dismissed it. The idea of original sin deeply and viscerally offended me. I refused to conceive of it. Refused to picture a smudge on a soul that I had already imagined as a pristine, silvery, winged transparency.

Some companionable spirits from the Judeo-Christian pantheon got into my secret garden. These welcome divinities often came from images on the Renaissance paintings that I first encountered on the holy cards that the Sisters passed out as good conduct prizes. Many of these angels and Marys and Eves eventually enter the world of my poetry and the world of my novel.

In my teens, I looked backwards and sideways for other gods, from other cultures. I minored in comparative religions at University, majored in philosophy. But rather than adopting a new belief system, or adopting newly encountered gods, the discarding of old beliefs and familiar gods picked up its pace. I leaned deeply into the abyss, the glittering cosmic void, the hum of nothingness—the volatile womb of creation, where it becomes possible to know one’s own mind.

I’ve come to see these early acts of divesture as foundational—the building of a springboard into the next mystery.

That said, one mischievous foreign deity did make its way into my secret garden. I was in my thirties when I first read the Hindu Ramayana, and Lord Hanuman, the monkey god, leapt into my mind, knocking over plates and planets, wreaking holy havoc.

Starting over, became my personal mantra. Always making it new. Leaping like Hanuman into other worlds and other minds. Starting over, the leaps became poems, songs, a Magdalene Mass. Then plays. Then, most recently a novel, White Monkey Chronicles.

As I wrote the novel, I became aware of the abiding presence of my seven-year-old self. Her spectacular freedom to range wide and wildly in realms of spiritual creativity, her freedom to speculate chased me, tagged me. An uninhibited girl ran at my side. A girl who combined the divine and the ridiculous with unselfconscious élan. A dancer in her own light.

White Monkey Chronicles tells the story of a rogue order of nuns who adopt an undocumented deity. At some point I realized that the order of nuns was based on my seven-year-old’s notion of the Sisters who taught me at Blessed Sacrament School in Hollywood, California. These religious women would never recognize themselves, so thoroughly have they been invested with some of the fanciful qualities, I gave them as a child.

I was always a girl who invented gods. Thus, Mother Mary Extraordinary entered the world of White Monkey.

The invention of the gods—that is real subject of this essay. The first god that I invent in the course of writing my novel is a multi-cultural bastard, the divine issue of the Biblical bachelor Jew and the very married Hindu deity, Sita. Admittedly, this is one of my more transgressive acts of the imagination. Lord Hanuman just whispered in my ear, “blame the monkey.”

In truth, I believe that the freedom to deconstruct, reconstruct, joke about, play with, recreate the stories about the gods is tantamount to the freedom to have one’s own thoughts. (Paraphrasing Salman Rushdie, who got into boodles of trouble doing just that—having and writing thoughts of his own.) Without these vital speculations there is no spiritual adventure. One never really leaves home if the destination is all too familiar.

It is noteworthy, that the traditional pilgrim is told exactly where they are meant to arrive before the journey is even begun. Mecca, for example. Or in the classic Pilgrims Progress, the destination is The Celestial City. The path is mapped, the obstacles noted, and the destination marked. These closed systems leave the true seeker with nowhere to go. The adventurous mind longs to roam in a spacious cosmocracy, where there is freedom to move and time is elastic.

As a practicing spiritual speculator, I feel most akin to the ancient tribe of poets and oracles who invented the very notion of gods and angels. These are my ancestors, and I suppose I have always been waiting for my moment to arrive—my chance to step up and create a goddess.

Writing White Monkey Chronicles—so many beautiful midnights passed, staring into the infinity that is the computer screen, my fingers tapping out incantatory phrases on the keyboard—I was increasingly aware that the momentum of the story was bending towards the appearance of the Creatrix Mundi: She From Whom All Flows.

First, I gave her a name. I called her the Godma. With her name on my tongue, I felt I had taken my place in a tribal story circle that stretched back to the beginnings of myth-making. My turn had arrived. My turn to tell her story. I gathered a lifetime of gleanings and glimpses.

I wanted her image to personify the motility of spiritual evolution. She could not true to the world-as-we-know-it and be a static entity. So, I invented a goddess who embodies change, an evolving goddess who is made of the stories that humankind makes, a co-creatrix who is constantly remade by serial acts of the imagination. Made by leaps and bounds.

The poet, the painter, the icon-maker, the prayer-maker, the sculptor, the dancer, the musician, the meditator, the speculator—all of us are her necessary co-creators. She is multi-faceted. Her faces are the multitudes. She is not away. She is here. We evolve together.

We conscious beings are paradoxically both the makers and the made in the divine matrix of her being.

She is every child whispering:

Tell me a story.

There are no direct experiences in her epistemology, merely shifts in the patterns of signals, the electric flash dance of dendrites that link and ignite identities and narratives alike, link and ignite all the infinitesimal points of consciousness. Her personal nirvana is to submerge herself in the illuminated minds of other beings, bathe in the ecstatic effusions of sentients flooded with insights, riddled with game plans.

Isabella Ides is a poet, playwright, and novelist. Most recently her trilogy, White Monkey Chronicles, has garnered critical praise for its multi-culturalism and feminist depiction of radical spiritual hospitality. Winner of several theatre accolades, including a Critic’s Forum Award for Coco & Gigi, and Echo Theater’s National Big Shout Out for The Early Education of Conrad Eppler, Isabella is also the author of a collection of poetry, Getting Dangerously Close to Myself, the creator of the acclaimed Magdalene Mass.www.WhiteMonkeyChronicles.com

]]>https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/19/creatrix-mundi-speculating-the-godma-by-isabella-ides/feed/24white-monkey-chronicles-femreligionWhen “The Storm Left No Flowers” – A Review by Sara Wrighthttps://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/18/when-the-storm-left-no-flowers-a-review-by-sara-wright/
https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/18/when-the-storm-left-no-flowers-a-review-by-sara-wright/#commentsFri, 18 Jan 2019 08:01:59 +0000http://feminismandreligion.com/?p=43109Read More ›]]>During the last year I have been struggling with the catastrophic effects of Climate Change like never before as I witness the continuation of a drought that is withering plants, starving tree roots, shriveling our wildflowers and wild grasses, leaving our mountains barren of snow, and changing the face of the high desert for the foreseeable future. With forest fires leaving me literally breathless from plumes of thick smoke that turn the sun into a ball of orange flames at dawn, unable to cope with 100 plus degree heat, my body forces me to surrender: I will not be able to make my permanent home here. Instead I will migrate like the birds do – from south to north and back again.

Coming to terms with the ravages of Climate Change brought me to my knees; it has been one of the most difficult adjustments I have ever had to make. I mourn the death of the trees, plants, the loss of precious frogs and toads, insects, birds, lizards – every plant and creature is under attack and few of us can thrive (let alone survive) in such an unforgiving climate.

By far the worst manifestation of desert drought is painfully obvious – the astonishing lack of rain (In my front yard here in Abiquiu, New Mexico I measured three inches of rain for the entire year of 2018). Red Willow River has shrunk into stone.

Almost never having the luxury of smelling the unbearably sweet scent of rain, gazing at scrub that glows sage green after being bathed by the Cloud People, or just listening to the healing sound of a precious deluge as it soaks into parched ground creates a longing in me that runs deeper than the deepest underground river.

I know now that I had to come to the desert to face what is.

To paraphrase poet and writer Barbara Ribidoux ‘the world as we know it is broken.’

When I read this little book of poems with which I am now in intimate relationship with, I know there is another Indigenous woman out there that is living with what is.

Barbara’s words bring me hope – not hope that all will be well – but hope in the sense that I am not alone in either my grief – or in my belief that I must take refuge in the present in order to survive this holocaust. What ‘taking refuge’ means to me is to be strong enough to stay with what is and to find joy in each moment spent appreciating each bird or tree that still lives on this precious blue – green planet that is also my home.

Barbara reminds me “ the elements of earth, wind, fire and water all contribute to an ever shifting landscape that displays tremendous beauty (italics are mine) in these changing times.” I think of her as I begin each day watching the sky turn golden or crimson in the pre –dawn hours as I kneel before my wood stove giving thanks for warmth, and the gift of one more precious chance to feel Life and Love in motion. The bittersweet orange wings of Flicker in flight evokes a gasp of wonder.

Barbara also notes that this is a confusing time for some bringing me closer to accepting that many simply don’t see.

“Fire and Water rage. Murderous storms kill thousands. With every massive earthquake the earth changes the tilt on her axis.”

Barbara also tells stories that might speak to a future as yet unknown (excerpt from Out of the Ashes):

Tonight the crescent moon holds water,refuses to release rain on this dry town.The old ones tell storiesin time the earth will dryfires will transform the land.Out of the ashes we will live again…

“The Storm Left No Flowers” is an unforgettable book of poems that will accompany me on the journey through these last years of my life, bringing me comfort and joy, assuaging loneliness, reminding me that living in the truth of what is can be endured with integrity, dignity, and honor.

I encourage anyone who loves this Earth, who grieves her losses, who fears for an incomprehensible future to be-friend this collection of poems that speak in tongues of flame, grace, and splendor.

Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Northern New Mexico.

An expert traveler knows that the best part of leaving is coming back. I am happy to open another year writing here again, after a necessary break, since writing is the way I maintain my strong ties with my critical spirit and this community that I cherish and has become through the years, my safe space.

Let me start with this. At the end of last year I was teaching a course on Gender, Women and Islam for social science students at a College in Mexico. One of the question I was often asked was: Madam, Is God a She?

In my early years in Islam, I used to ask this question to senior believers. I never received a direct response, but expressions of outrage with a resounding NO. NO! NO! No way! God is not SHE! HE is the neutral!

I avoided linguistic controversies, privileging actual political intervention in religious sphere. However, the context we live in, where patriarchal violence grows in cruelty and impunity, challenging a neutral masculine becomes critical to denounce the predation on women and minorized bodies.

According to the Quran, Allah does not have a gender. Is not a man, nor a woman nor a thing. It is not possible to assimilate Allah with anything created. Sura 112 says that God is:

… the One God, the Everlasting Refuge, who has not begotten, nor has been begotten…

God is one, everything created is a godly manifestation. God is everything and in everything there is something of God: You and I, the dawn and the flight of the birds, the thousands of varieties of orchids, the sublime design of the snowflakes, the joy and the sadness, the anger and the calm. God is eternal, nothing in this world can contain or express such Magnificence. God speaks clearly to us in the Quran about the all-encompassing and non-generic Divine Nature in Sura 24:

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth (…) Light upon light.

If God is the light, a radiant light whose merciful glow embraces everything, then, I wonder: Why is mandatory using the He to name God? Why using She is taken as linguistic rebellion? God is gender-neutral, there should be no problem in calling God a She.

Few days ago, I came across a text of Nahida S. Nisa called Pronouns, where she says that in her mother tongue “Everyone has one pronoun, the same pronoun, adjusted to singular or to plural or to familiarity. That’s a true neutral.” Nahida states that the fondness in using He to name God, is due to the limitations of language and the shortcomings of believers:

You don’t know language. You only speak primitive languages that rely on gendered pronouns. English. Arabic. French. Primitive, just like you. You will never understand that as long as She exists—and you have tried very hard to erase her existence—He will never be neutral…

She has a point. Our languages are poor in comparison to God´s Depth. Also, there is no obligation for Muslims to call God as He. Ibn al- Arabi, a prominent 12th century Islamic philosopher, said, “I sometimes employ the feminine pronoun in addressing Allah, keeping in view The Essence.”

Al Rahman and Al Raheem directly emanate from The Divine Feminine. Why? Because, it is from the root of these words, Al Rahman and Al Raheem, that we discover a direct correlation to The Divine Feminine specifically from the word, “RHM” which means Womb.

If Allah is a Matrix, then God is also a She.

So, in Islam, God has no gender nor human form, so the pronoun She, should be considered equally projective of God’s nature. Even if we are humanly guided by language, there is a powerful feminine expression in fundamental divine attributes.

Think about it. God is also a She. Her mercy encompasses all things. This should not be controversial. So, what is the problem?

Is not God, of course. Maybe believers who live in patriarchal societies where the masculine is seen as the preferred gender over the feminine? Believers who have scholars and preachers who pollute the sacred notion of Tawheed with the divisive arrogance of his male chauvinism? Believers who disobey God and stay repeating what they’re told, with no further reflection?

What is the level of vanity and ignorance of those “wise men and scholars”, who claim to act in knowledge of ALLAH, THE CREATOR, while giving to misogyny a divine rank? Why are they so afraid of thinking about God with female expressions? I think they know they are weak before the Powerful Divine Creative Force, which is and will be eternally SHE. All act of creation needs and depends on a Matrix to happen and succeed so, without a WOMB nothing exist.

A short and edited version of this article will be published in the February issue of Muslim Views, South Africa. Image: Divine Womanhood by Gioia Albano. Used only for illustrative purposes

]]>https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/17/the-feminine-in-god/feed/1210268143_artmajeur-divine-feminine-womanhood-art-resting-in-gold-gioia-albano-2014-300-dpi-modvriveradelafuente73Dissent by Gina Messinahttps://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/16/dissent-by-gina-messina/
https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/16/dissent-by-gina-messina/#commentsWed, 16 Jan 2019 08:01:04 +0000http://feminismandreligion.com/?p=43140Read More ›]]>I often share that what I’ve learned about strength, perseverance, and responsibility, I learned from my grandmother and namesake, Gina. In November we celebrated her life and said goodbye to the pioneering woman who overcame the greatest of obstacles to lead a life of dissent.

Gina Sr. was born in Camaiore, Italy in 1926. She lived through WWII, was captured and escaped from Nazi soldiers three times, and walked 200 miles to find safety. Following the war she found herself on a boat filled with war brides headed to the U.S. and never saw her family again. She divorced in the early 60’s becoming a single mother and social pariah, and survived the loss of three of her children.

Through much struggle, heartache, trauma, and grief that would have left many giving up, Gina Sr. persevered. She dissented with her life choices and found that as a result, she created a path that eventually led to a better life for herself and her family.

My grandmother was Catholic. She loved the Church. She donated her time and money to the Church. And she lived a life that would have made Jesus — also a dissenter — proud. But the Church did not love my grandmother. As a divorced woman she was rejected and in the final days of her life refused communion and last rites.

While the Church allowed us to hold a service for my grandmother, we were not allowed to offer a eulogy.I was asked to offer a reading during the service. In the spirit of Gina Sr. I thought it important to dissent. Not that I declined to participate. In fact, standing on the altar while honoring my grandmother felt like dissent in itself. But I decided to dissent further.

My brother and I approached the altar together, we both offered a reading. We stood side by side and I opened my copy of the passage from the Book of Romans. Although there was a copy on the altar, I had made notes on mine. I decided that I would use gender neutral language throughout the reading when referring to God. It seemed a fitting tribute to the woman who taught me about feminism.

I lifted my voice, spoke directly into the microphone, and read the Book of Romans referring to God as the Divine. The priest who sat on the other side of the altar turned slowly to look at me as if to give me “the eye;” he wanted to condemn me. He was angry. His face was red. I could imagine what he was thinking:

“Who does she think she is? A woman given the privilege to stand at the altar and she dares to refer to God as other than a man?”

Yep. When the opportunity presents itself — and it is just — you must dissent. That is what Gina Sr. taught me. And so I did.

My brother and I returned to our seats. We held hands and giggled like school children. We cried together as we sang Ave Maria. And we honored our grandmother one last time by living out her example.

Such an act may seem small, even insignificant. But it was noticed. More so, it is what my grandmother taught me to do — to stand tall and get the job done knowing that sometimes the smallest act of dissent can deliver the blow necessary to make a crack.

Gina Messina is a Roman Catholic, a feminist, and one of the founders of the Feminism and Religion blog.

]]>https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/16/dissent-by-gina-messina/feed/13dissent_magazine_us_logoDemeter71517_10200316462096891_2039548303_nmom0066Longing to Heal Family in our Differences and Distances by Lache S.https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/15/longing-to-heal-family-in-our-differences-and-distances-by-lache-s/
https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/15/longing-to-heal-family-in-our-differences-and-distances-by-lache-s/#commentsTue, 15 Jan 2019 08:01:12 +0000http://feminismandreligion.com/?p=43133Read More ›]]>I can’t even save myself. I make bad decisions just like the ones in the world – bombs and wars and the industrial revolution with chains of greed. But then I go on and, without even knowing any part of the story, want to save others. Carol Christ’s post yesterday on family brought me to tears and I instantly had to write a poem. First, it made me think of the memory of my own mother telling me to wait for my dad to get a belt and him saying it will hurt him more than it does me.

Except when I told my mom this, she said it never happened, so I don’t understand the vivid visions in my head that I have being little and hearing the words and being afraid, and why the sight of men’s work belts make me nauseous. I believe my mother. It doesn’t matter either way, I guess, now, in my opinion about my own experience. What I mean by that is I don’t want to do the work of being suspicious or thinking about what is at stake at the moment. I’m okay with shelving it. Let’s just say I believe and don’t feel like trying to explain those visions. I suppose everyone will have an opinion about my decision and perspective on this. Feel free to voice it if it makes you feel better.

Mother Daughter by Tanya Grabkova

But then what I cried about was more just the impetus of thinking back to childhood and my own lack. I wrote the poem below. I think about how deeply ingrained it is within women to want to save, to heal, to nourish, to protect and make things better, to not care that much who is to blame, but wanting to mother. Okay, I said ‘women’ and not ‘some women’ but that’s the way I want to write that sentence. Back to my initial sentence, I know the sentiment of saving others can be presumptuous. Not all mothers know best. I certainly don’t think I do, the mother that I am in a sense, not actually having children. If we all just take care of ourselves, perhaps everything will be okay. So I will continue to figure out how to do that and just leave my other instincts unresolved in reality by putting it in this poem to rest.

Time Machine

Back into my childhood,crawl through low tunnels,curl up like a fetusto backflip through a vortex,arriving in the musty,canned corn and meatloaf,nappy brown carpet and Sears catalogslivingroom. Save you.

Momma, take more black & whites,burgeoning photographer,class or two at the college—Dad would pay. You could submitthe photos to a local magazine,get a part-time job as journalist:you’re a good writer too.Got that creative gene.

Daddy, you’re my favorite.Working so hard at the auto shop.Teach me about Chevrolets.Always thought you were a doctor,the way you could diagnosean engine. Superhero too, chasingafter the Honda in the Bed, Bath & Beyondparking lot. For some reason.

You both need saving now,but I’m not sure I can give enoughpats on the back or praiseto boost your confidence, get you to move.Back then, it was so raw.Now you have God, the harsh one,and that is my fault too.I don’t know how to repair anything

after damage is done,and that’s when it needs to happen.As an adult I thoughtyou should have been different for me;I guess I was still too young to seethat is not really how it works.I was still able to grasp a key,but is the lock too damaged for a good fit?

Or are you not the one trappedbecause how can we really know if joylurks in the corners of a house not ours?Why do we realize too latethe power of our could-be kindnesses,words which lose ability to contain air,an element needed to communicateacross generations and seas?

I love the support and freedom in the lyrics of ‘Promise’, the mother-daughter duet between Tori Amos and Natashya: “I promise not to say that you told me so. . . I’m getting too old. . . to judge you.” What wonderful sacred relationships between daughters and mothers there could be if we could find the dialogue of friendliness, friends, supporting and advising without agenda or control. Many of us discover relationships with others that are so positive, that are spiritual in that they give freedom while also love, prompting us to grow and then we wish for those elements in all our relationships.

I just hope for harmony and perhaps the best that I can hope for is that everyone can heal their own hurts. I’m still figuring out how to take care of myself and not depend on others, hoping one day to have the resources to help others in material and tangible ways. My parents are still alive, and I want them to live their best lives. But is that just a distraction from figuring out my own situation (basically figuring out what I should do or where I should go next)? The feelings surrounding our relationship to our families can be complicated. I would like to hear from you who also have complicated feelings about and relationships with children or parents. How do you create healing spaces and paths forward?

Lache S., Ph.D., graduated in 2014 from the Women and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University. She teaches online composition from a contemplative pedagogical approach at Oklahoma State University. Currently, she is working on a chapbook of poetry and traveling through Iceland, Spain, and Ireland.

“No Whips, No Punishments, No Threats: Women’s Control of Social Life” is the title of one of the chapters in Iroquoian Women, Barbara Alice Mann’s stunning reconstruction of female power in a matrilineal society. According to Mann, the European settlers were “unsettled” by the lack of strict punishment systems for children in Indian societies. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was the backbone of European child-rearing practices. The settlers viewed Indian children as naughty, disobedient, disrespectful, and horror of horrors: self-possessed.

It is perhaps no coincidence that after reading this chapter, bodily memories of violence inflicted on me as a child began to resurface. My strongest bodily memory is of being hit repeatedly on my left upper arm by my younger brother’s fist. It is as if my arm is still stinging in that particular place. My mother wanted us to play together, but when we did, we usually ended up fighting. My brother, who was two and a half years younger, was later diagnosed with dyslexia and given “little red pills” to help him control his temper. I was a quiet child (there must have been reasons for that too), and though I soon realized that if I hit back I would only be hurt more, I learned to use my tongue against my brother. This too was a form of violence and my brother remembers my cruelty to this day. Once when I asked my mother what she wanted for her birthday, she responded, “Two children who do not fight.” I didn’t even try to give her that because I didn’t know another way.

Violence was also inflicted on me by my parents. My mother occasionally lost her temper and spanked our bottoms when we were little. But as in many families, she more frequently told us: “Wait till your father gets home.” When our father got home, we were told to take down our pants and lie across his lap while he struck us with his open hand or his belt. This continued until we reached our teens. Because this punishment was considered “normal” when we were growing up, and because my father was never out of control when he struck us, I did not recognize spanking as “violence” until Rita Nakashima Brock named it as such in Proverbs of Ashes. Only now am I beginning to recognize the element of sexual humiliation in the command to take down our pants.

I have had cancer (fortunately detected early and with no reccurrence). I suffered from depression in my twenties and thirties. Although I do not have respiratory illness, to this day I tend to breathe shallowly. Was I a quiet child because I been told I had no right to speak or take up space? Did I struggle to gain “self-possession” because it had been beaten out of me?

Memories of violence inflicted on my body surfaced again in recent discussions here on FAR of the warrior archetype. I took what seemed to be the minority position of rejecting all forms of the warrior archetype including women warriors, spiritual warriors, and warrior Goddesses. I believe all of these images project the idea of harming someone. Sometimes that someone is depicted as evil. In ascetic traditions spiritual warriors attempt to subdue the body and its passions; in some Buddhist traditions it is the ego that is slain. While writing these words today, I reach for the sweet halvah on my desk to comfort the feelings of distress in my body.

According to Barbara Alice Mann, it is true that Indian children were not punished, but it is not true that they were given no moral or social direction. Indian mothers taught their children right from wrong by loudly praising good or socially acceptable behaviors and loudly condemning bad or socially unacceptable behaviors. This system worked because children exhibiting kindness, generosity, and co-operation were embodying the highest social values of their culture, expressed in their myths and legends and understood by everyone.

We, in contrast, are in a much more difficult situation. Parents who do not spank their children and who attempt to teach them not to fight with each other or to inflict violence on others are living in larger cultures in which is violence normalized and widely assumed to be the only way to resolve conflicts. Parents who do not want their children to imbibe violence would have to prohibit them from watching most television shows and movies and from reading even the so-called great works of the western tradition. They would have to keep them out of schools and playgrounds. In recent weeks I received a number of surveys from progressive groups asking me about my priorities for the next election: not once has “ending endless wars” (the phrase is Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s) or reducing the military budget been included as one of the choices.

There must be another way. Iroquoian Women shows us that another way is possible. Can we create it?

]]>https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/14/when-violence-is-normal-by-carol-p-christ/feed/20kvs413827.jpgcarolpchrist“Renewal?” 2019 by Sara Wrighthttps://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/13/renewal-by-sara-wright/
https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/01/13/renewal-by-sara-wright/#commentsSun, 13 Jan 2019 08:01:20 +0000http://feminismandreligion.com/?p=43114Read More ›]]>Just that one word dreamed the night of January 1st.

Last evening all my Bear Circle animals gathered in front of the 8 flickering candles (intentions I had set for this coming year) – most were about the loving the Earth, my body, the bodies of animals and trees, giving thanks for gifts offered in 2018.

The animals were walking towards the evergreen wreath, my Circle of Life, soon to enter the Great Round. My fervent hope was that during this human induced ‘sixth extinction’ some would find a way to survive…

Telling stories through stone animals is something the child has been doing for almost 40 years when I first dreamed the “Bear Circle”… Sometimes these stories ‘work’ and sometimes not. But I never stop the child’s meanderings for often she knows more than I do…

Staring into the flames of the candle at the center of the wreath, I imagined the animals walking through to a kinder place where all creatures and trees were loved.

Even as my heart broke.

So many losses and more to come.

Renewal?

Even in the dream the word remains a question… perhaps opening to unimaginable possibility?

This morning there was no sunrise.

Eight Ravens brought in the day.

Messengers from the Beyond witness what is, will be.

Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Northern New Mexico.

Am I being called
by Raven,
and Owl
to choose?Re-weave
the circle
of Shadow and Fire,
a monstrous West Moon,
embrace burning bones,
barren mountains
still hidden
from sight?

Postscript: Dreams like this one are mysterious and more than personal, I believe. Is this one about reclaiming Earth’s Shadow created by men? What do you think?

A 2019 reflection will follow tomorrow…

Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Northern New Mexico.